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Elizaveta Gromoglasova

PhD in Political Science, RIAC Expert

The history of Europe has dark pages, so dark that their unearthing is viewed as being politically incorrect. Some say that the world has changed, including in discussion of the Holocaust. People seem to remember the Holocaust with indifference, regarding the tragedy as a museum exhibit to be displayed to schoolchildren as part of their formal education. But, the Holocaust should not only remembered, but also perceived as a truth relevant for today.

Something happened there that none of us can cope with...
Hannah Arendt

The history of Europe has dark pages, so dark that their unearthing is viewed as being politically incorrect. Some say that the world has changed, including in discussion of the Holocaust. And this is hardly surprising because remembrance is associated with severe trauma and a desire to recover from the ordeal. Today’s European values appear to be found in much more general matters. However, this is not to say that the Holocaust has been deprived of a meaningful niche in modern European consciousness. A great deal is done to preserve its memory. And this issue could have been left untouched if some countries had not demonstrated an appeal to organizations whose members participated in the genocide. Hence, the tragic events of the past also act as a mirror reflecting the today’s world, prompting the question "Quo vadis, Europe?"

Remember and Know

Consigning the Holocaust to oblivion is hardly a privilege of Europe. The phenomenon has many manifestations but the most worrisome seems to lie in the virtually absolute absence of topical research analyzing the Holocaust as an act of genocidal violence against a backdrop of similar transgressions that occurred after World War II. People seem to remember the Holocaust with indifference, regarding the tragedy as a museum exhibit to be displayed to schoolchildren as part of their formal education. But, the Holocaust should not only remembered, but also perceived as a truth relevant for today.

The only way to make this approach a reality would be through refraining from those trite explanations of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their accomplices through "centuries-old European anti-Semitism", the "post-war humiliation of Germany", "sources of totalitarianism" and similar factors. It is only by analysing the Holocaust through concrete biographies, i.e. via survivors’ memories, that we can understand that these testimonies offer a direct link to today.

People seem to remember the Holocaust with indifference, regarding the tragedy as a museum exhibit to be displayed to schoolchildren as part of their formal education.

We must take the Holocaust out of the narrow framework of the history of the Third Reich and view it as a compilation of life stories, actions and motivations, apply it to a single soccer match between members of the SS and a Sonderkommando. This fact became known thanks Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor. Just imagine for a second that "the match is still going on" in each televised game and in our day-to-day routine, and that we are unwittingly present there, and thus arrive at an understanding of the significance of all that transpired in the Nazi concentration camps. In the long run, "if we cannot understand the match and stop it, we shall lose every hope."

To this end, the attitudes suggested by Giorgio Agamben (recently translated into Russian) with the focus on survivor testimony, among other things, his concept of homo sacer. In fact, it is the story of a human being who has, for some reason, been deprived of all rights, for example in a concentration camp where basic rights and liberties are nonexistent. The victim becomes defenseless against arbitrariness, while the oppressors instead of developing a sense of guilt, develop a sense of impunity. Sacer primarily means life that can be easily taken away through violence.

From this perspective, the Holocaust is essentially different from other precedents of genocidal violence, because of the ramified network of concentration and death camps, which produced homines sacri, i.e. creatures whose personality and consciousness were totally suppressed by humiliation, intimidation and fear. Camp slang used terms such as Krueppel, Schwimmer or Schmuckstuecke, all of them meaning goners. Dr. Levi describes such a human as follows: "O-eighteen is not a human and thus deserves no name… When he is speaking or watching, you may think he is only a shell, and is completely empty inside…" The survivors find it difficult to assess the goners and only ask "Is it really a human?" The Nazi camp was an unprecedented experiment in the field of bio-politics. But one cannot obliterate the human essence, since something always remains intact. And this something is the witness."

AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski
Holocaust survivors arrive for a ceremony
to mark the 69th anniversary of the liberation
of Auschwitz Nazi death camp's in Oswiecim,
Poland

The camps composed an extraordinary space, where law was suspended, while reality and law became indiscernible, making the horrible reality possible. This approach produces the definition of the Holocaust as violence generated by the elite, in this case by the German elite. It required the camps to establish a space of exception, commit genocide and help people outside that space to carry on living at peace with their consciousness. And the narratives of Primo Levi corroborate this idea.

Initiation in the concentration camp was a monstrous ritual intended to break the newcomer's will. Names were replaced by numbers, in an attempt to erase their identities and prevent them from preserving anything of their former selves, through their names. Camps permanently used random selection techniques, frequently very primitive, as boxcar doors were opened on both sides, after which those who exited from one side were sent to the camp, while the other became the gate to eternity.

Why was it organized that way? One explanation may lie in the intention to create the maximum possible distance between the victims and the perpetrators, so that the latter were deprived of any ability to view the prisoners as humans. Labor was another tool to generate a huge gap between the captives and the rest of the society. The slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Brings Freedom) was in fact a systemic requirement. Prisoners who were powerless to resist were akin to draught dogs in the books of Jack London, who died in their harness. This type of labor only underlined the huge abyss between the commanders and the workers. Sonderkommandos were also designed to extend the distance – before the killing, the victim was to be driven to complete degradation, so that the killer did not feel the burden of guilt."

We must take the Holocaust out of the narrow framework of the history of the Third Reich and view it as a compilation of life stories, actions and motivations, apply it to a single soccer match between members of the SS and a Sonderkommando.

It was vital for the Nazi elite to enact these limits, as selection was also applied to the Germans. The Third Reich proclaimed that Aryans deserved German honors, and the prisoners served as an illustrative example that the elite rightfully possessed the privileges. The Third Reich implemented a peculiar model of social organization specific not only to totalitarianism in which elite, which was realizing its ambitions with impunity, boasted enormous liberties and felt no guilt regarding their own actions, position, or the governed society. A compromise was found with the German people, since this extreme exception was extended to the others. Hence, the only deep-rooted motivation for any sort of collaboration seems to have been based in the desire to establish a similar rule with the focus on the homo sacer. The proportion of nobility among Hitler’s followers is impressive, including Sir Oswald Mosley, Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under Vichy Regime Louis Darquier de Pellepoix and numerous German aristocrats, as well as such established society leaders as Marshal Pétain, the Lion of Verdun. Of course, Nazi leaders offered a peculiar reference point for collaborationists in Central and Eastern Europe. Political violence toward civilians there extended beyond the Camps and, horrifically, became a practice so common it was banal.

The Dividing Line in European Societies: Then and Now

EPA/MARJAI JANOS
International Romani Day, Budapest, Hungary

If the concentration camp goner really was the main secret of the Third Reich, the theme of the Holocaust has numerous lessons for the modern Western world.

Although the idea of extreme forms of repression taking place in European democracies appears far-fetched, facts point to the high probability of an emerging division line for the homines sacri to be ejected after some time.

The mechanism seems clear. In a consumer society, the elite may think of ways to differentiate themselves from the middle class. And everything will click into place if society has one more pole, i.e. nonvoters, paupers, underprivileged or exiles. As a result, social differences become highly visible, i.e. the gap between the elite and the middle class is as huge as that between the middle class and the lowest rungs of society.

Looking at the Holocaust’s significance today, it would be wise to refrain from analyzing the human-citizen dichotomy and instead focus on that of the elite (the effective carriers of sovereignty or populus) and the commoners (paupers, underprivileged, exiles, or plebs). Since the Great French Revolution and its proclamation of the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, the West has been trying to reconcile these two poles in the single notion of the people as the guardians of sovereignty. And it is vital to see how the two poles are balanced in a democratic nation state.

To this end, “our epoch is meant as an attempt – inevitable and methodically performed – to fill the gap separating the people, decidedly eliminating the excepted people.” Europe is doing this with help of migrants, who constitute a sort of non-people that presents an easy target for exception at the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. The problem is in the elite that is persistently reproducing confined spaces, which are easily recognizable on the maps of metropolises – posh districts on one pole and shanty towns of the immigrants’ ghettos on the other.

Finally, we see the question of existence of a shadow, i.e. major flaws (for now barely discernible prototypes of the concentration camp space) in the very model of the modern democratic states. If this is indeed the case, then the Holocaust is hardly an antiquated truth, still less one that has been dealt with.

Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust in Modern Europe

REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer
Workers build a fence to stop migrants from
reaching the ferry harbour in Calais,
December 17, 2014

In Europe, the challenge of the Holocaust falling into oblivion differs from country to country, with the continent not yet divided into West and East on this issue, although most states are within the EU. Two factors appear key as far as West Europe is concerned. First, there are the incessant attempts to devalue survivors’ narratives. Second, West European societies firmly resist shedding the fruits of the cultural revolution of the long 1960s, the period in which relativism came into fashion.

Devaluing evidence was a strategy pioneered by the Nazis and later adopted by their suspected accomplices and populist-nationalist politicians, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen. Values relativism is normally dressed up in the garb of the opposition of two principles, i.e. freedom of speech and unacceptable nature of Holocaust denial. Great Britain, for instance, strictly prefers the first principle, setting a bad example for the East Europeans.

The memory of the Holocaust in East Europe is specific, as their WWII trauma is largely connected with a futile struggle for national independence and statehood, while full-fledged integration into the European values appears possible only after all the aftereffects of collaborationism have been dealt with.

Europe also displays some encouraging trends. Some countries have laws prohibiting Holocaust denial, although a detailed examination shows that the legal wording is often watered down. For example, Lithuania prohibits the denial or diminishment of the USSR’s and Nazi Germany’s crimes against the Lithuanian Republic and its residents (Article 170(2) of the Lithuanian Criminal Code), but makes no direct reference to the Holocaust.

There are also some positive signs like more moderation from the second generation of Europe’s right-wing populists – the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party Heinz-Christian Strache is much more guarded than his predecessor Jorg Haider. The differences on the same issues between Marin Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front are also clearly visible. Many Eurosceptic parties, i.e. the Dutch Freedom Party, UK Independence Party, etc., are not obviously associated with anti-Semitism. Analysts explain the failure of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the European Parliament elections in 2014 by its alliance with the National Front. In other words, right-wingers feel pressure even from their own.

We must take the Holocaust out of the narrow framework of the history of the Third Reich and view it as a compilation of life stories, actions and motivations, apply it to a single soccer match between members of the SS and a Sonderkommando.

However, the challenge to European values and a common historical memory is an unquestionable reality, strengthened by the interaction of factors contributing to the consignment of the Holocaust to oblivion in West and East Europe. It seems trite to reiterate that the memory of the Holocaust is a key component of the modern European identity, since casting a veil over the past would call into question the entire Western nation-state project.

***

The more we examine the narratives of concentration camp survivors, the more realistic seems the hope that we will succeed in preserving the inheritance of the post-war world order, which has done so much to prevent any repeat of these events. The narratives are invariably humane, touching and sometimes startling for a modern reader, since the prisoners had diverse worldviews and found solace in different ways. Primo Levi describes an episode after the liberation of Auschwitz when “the Russians sent him to be shaved by a barber,” for the first time he was free. Speaking of his own unbelievable liberation, the barber who was a worker and political activist, exclaimed: “..mais Joseph etait la!” “What Joseph is he talking about?” continues Primo Levi. “I needed several seconds to understand he meant Stalin.” According to Primo Levi, Stalin or the Russians were collective names for Soviet soldiers. However, the liberation of Auschwitz was painful both for the survivors and the liberators, as all of them were filled with shame over the camp experiences.

Over time, the number of surviving witnesses diminishes, which prompts the question of what will remain after them. The only path seems to lie in exploring and re-exploring their memories, the only path for Europe to remain Europe.

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